Bullshitting over Private Finance for Prosiect Gwyrdd

Bullshitting over Private Finance for Prosiect Gwyrdd

Cllr Mark Stephens took on the PFI question at Cardiff Council meeting of 24th February. "P Gwyrdd is under a PPP partnership so cannot be PFI" – you're confused he told Anne Greagsby!

People had thought this guy spouts acronyms like DBFOM and PPP to show his superiority, but his answer showed he doesn't understand that a partnership can use private finance – it fully deserved the response “bullshit”, which caused ripples amidst the smug rows in the Council Chamber.

Why is this important? Because it shows the chair of Prosiect Gwyrdd is an ignoramus, who doesn't read the crucial financial documents. The Procurement Strategy [1] at s.8.4.1 says WAG funding is “critical” and WAG requires use of SoPc4 (Standardisation of PFI Contracts Version 4). It shows too ignorance of the reasons why the LibDem party and its guru Vince Cable reject PFI deals as excessively costly and a proven rip-off.

Cllr Stephens also chairs Cardiff Council's Finance Cttee, which may explain the crassly wasteful expenditure in the Council's waste section, who sent kitchen and garden biowastes for processing in Derby at the immense cost of £500 per tonne (normally near £50 per tonne).

[1] www.caerphilly.gov.uk/prosiectgwyrdd/pdfs/Procurement_Strategy.pdf ; Standardisation of PFI Contracts Version 4 www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/d/ppp_technical_update.pdf

Clive Bates WAG Spin Doc

Clive Bates started as Director General for Sustainable Futures at the Welsh Assembly Government in March 2009, and paid £130k pa to front letters to the local press! ** Let’s recover energy from our waste letters to South Wales Echo Jan 20 2011 "IN THE interests of an open, honest conversation about how we deal with our rubbish..... "

Clive Bates CV coming through Greenpeace to become an apparachik, now declaring waste-to-energy is “best” ? *1990s worked for Greenpeace on energy and climate change, then became Director of ASH
* 2003 to Tony Blair's strategy unit
* 2005 head of environment policy at the Env AgencyRecently in 2010 became"Director General Sustainable Development" WAG. This grand title denotes the recent new layer of civil servants – Wales has appointed three @ £130k salary.
How does a guy with Greenpeace pedigree and understanding greenhouse gas complexities come to endorse the incineration industry line – that burning waste helps “to tackle climate change” in the local paper (S W Echo, 20 January**)? He repeats another canard: “energy from waste installations are regulated to stringent European standards, including those related to health” which of course comes from an Environment Agency blind to nanoparticles.